


just one thing that we have in common

by genesis_frog



Series: i feel celesdial [2]
Category: Hermitcraft RPF, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: (only briefly- joe's wine and not consumed by minors), Alcohol, Angst, Family Dynamics, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Loneliness, Minecraft championships, Platonic Relationships, Sundial/Moondial AU, Team as Family, hermit relationships arent intended as romantic but if you read it that way im not gonna sue you, however. i will eat your knees if u think tommy & false is romantic :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:49:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27457516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genesis_frog/pseuds/genesis_frog
Summary: False watches, quietly. She’s usually the type to stick to the sides of a party, let other people speak first, and she wasn’t particularly close with any of their visitors, so she didn’t feel the need to inject herself into the conversations. Instead, she finds herself scanning the crowd, being sure her family was safe - and keeping an eye on their visitors, just in case.It occurs to her, suddenly, that she doesn’t know where Tommy is.(Tommy vanishes from a group get-together. False finds him.)
Relationships: Falsesymmetry & TommyInnit
Series: i feel celesdial [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2006266
Comments: 19
Kudos: 262





	just one thing that we have in common

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [where you came from, what you always will be](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27448339) by [weepingalpacafuneral](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingalpacafuneral/pseuds/weepingalpacafuneral). 



> HOO BOY HERE WE GO!!!!  
> sundial and moondial, also called the eclipse/celesdial au, is an au where philza, fundy, wilbur, and technoblade are trapped in hermitcraft after mcc7, which ends up bringing hermitcraft and dreamsmp together in many ways. moondial takes place afterward, when the mcc9 blue bats + grian are trapped in dreamsmp. I recommend checking out "#sundial au" and "#moondial au" on tumblr for more about it, or visit [me](%E2%80%9Daroaceacacia.tumblr.com%E2%80%9D), [lime](%E2%80%9Dlimelocked.tumblr.com%E2%80%9D), [soozu](%E2%80%9Dpomodoko.tumblr.com%E2%80%9D), and [alpaca](%E2%80%9Dweepingalpacafuneral.tumblr.com%E2%80%9D) for more!
> 
> this fic is false's POV of a oneshot written by alpaca, which i recommend reading first, because it sets up some stuff better than i did.
> 
> title from saint bernard by lincoln!

The Cowmercial District is unusually busy, as a throng of Hermits mingle with each other and their five visitors from Dream SMP (and beyond). Philza, Technoblade, and Wilbur Soot - all of whom had previously found themselves stranded in Hermitcraft - chatter with the Hermits: Wilbur gesticulating widely to a grinning Grian, Techno standing shoulder to shoulder with Etho, Philza laughing and clapping a hand on Beef’s back. A tick of redstoners talk amongst themselves, boisterous as always; it seems Impulse has hoisted Tubbo onto his shoulders, and Tubbo glows with a kind of pride and excitement that only comes with being in one’s own element. His fingers are stained with redstone dust.

False watches, quietly. She’s usually the type to stick to the sides of a party, let other people speak first, and she wasn’t particularly close with any of their visitors, so she didn’t feel the need to inject herself into the conversations. Instead, she finds herself scanning the crowd, being sure her family was safe - and keeping an eye on their visitors, just in case.

It occurs to her, suddenly, that she doesn’t know where Tommy is.

Tommy had come along with his brothers, adoptive father, and best friend, all boisterous energy and excitement to visit the massive server. False remembered this well, because of the way she felt when she realized he would be coming, a sharp reminder of the psychological torment he put her through when she was stranded in Dream SMP.

(Which, to be frank, was not really _torment_. She had been alone, the only Hermit stranded who didn’t latch onto a member of the SMP; an autumn tree without leaves, neutral, careful, _alone_ \- when Tommyinnit seemed to sweep out of nowhere, shove a pickaxe into her hands, demand to know how good she was at grinding out resources, and then set her to work digging massive “intimidation pits” down to bedrock. While the motivation was confusing, the rhythm of the motions was comforting when she didn’t know what to do with herself, had no projects to work on, and no time to attempt a build she could feel proud of; this perfect solution to all of her problems just, unfortunately, came with the bonus prize of having to endure both the company of Tommyinnit for hours each day and all the inane bull he would spew while attempting to get a rise out of her. She learned, quickly, to ignore him.)

So needless to say, she had… mixed feelings about his visit. She’d probably consider herself cautiously pessimistic about it. She kept to the fringes, letting him interact with others first, and then slowly, as things settle down and groups formed, it occurs to her he’s nowhere to be seen. Or heard, for that matter - his laugh is so loud she ought to be hearing it from across the island. She double checks, scanning the crowd and counting heads, and yes - they’re down a blonde head of hair. Something unsettles in her stomach.

False creeps toward the nearest group of Hermits to her, which happens to be Jevin, Hypno, Scar, and Wels. They’re standing in a loose clump, all holding potion bottles of Joe’s wine like they’re white men casually holding bottles of beer at a party. It’s a testament to how much she trusts them that this doesn’t intimidate her, the way it might have in the past. False waits until the group laughs at a joke Jevin makes at Hypno's expense to lightly touch a hand to his shoulder and ask, “Jevin, have you seen Tommy?”

Jevin turns and looks at her, and has an expression similar to something she’s seen before in combat, when someone gets snuck up on, or they’re caught in a mistake. False would probably describe it as being caught off guard. A person more comfortable with reading Jevin’s face would probably say he was just surprised to see her.

“Which one was that again?” he asks. She frowns.

“The loud blond child,” she tells him flatly.

“Sorry Falsie, I haven’t seen him,” Jevin answers with a shrug.

She sighs, nods, and tells him, “I feared as much.”

That means Tommy’s loose on Hermitcraft, and he could be doing anything. _He could be breaking things, or stealing items that are banned from his world, or doing drugs, or..._ She has to stop herself before she spirals too deep, and she takes a breath. She’s more practical than all of that, she has to be. _Gotta find Tommy._

She readies a firework to take off, but just as she’s about to fly, a hand touches her shoulder - it’s Jevin’s turn to get her attention. She looks at him curiously, and he smiles. She likes his smile; it makes her feel like she’s in on an inside joke.

“Love you, Falsie,” he tells her with a grin. She loves the way his blue slime face squishes and shakes with every movement he makes, it’s endearing. “Go get that kid.”

He claps her on the cheek with the hand from her shoulder, and she mirrors the gesture back to him with a smile.

With the pop of a firework explosion, she takes off into the air, scanning the Cowmercial District from the sky. He couldn’t have gone far, she figures, he doesn’t have an elytra and there shouldn’t be boats nearby. There’s also no way the kid has the patience to swim _anywhere,_ even to the closest locations, which means he’s still in the shopping district. It turns out, she’s got the right idea, as she spots a solitary figure on the roof of Welsmart.

False dives and glides to a halt, landing behind the figure. One glance at a head of blonde hair and a white and red shirt confirms it’s who she’s looking for. Tommy sits on the edge of Welsmart’s roof, gazing out over the ocean, eyes trained on Impulse’s massive coffee table. False gets it. If she didn’t see it every day, she’d probably stare, too.

When she takes a step closer to him, he’s broken out of his trance and his eyes snap toward her. He seems…. surprised? Confused? Sad? False was never that great at reading faces. (Now bodies, she can speak the language of bodies; she can recognize hostility, rigidity, anger, refusal to cooperate, she can read minds through the way a man swings a sword, or takes a step, or draws his bow. These things speak volumes, and False hears them clearly, every time.) His back is slumped, and although that’s normal for Tommy, he looks even more curled in on himself than normal, and his stare feels heavy on her shoulders. She feels like she just walked in on someone having a Moment, with a capital M.

False thinks, for a moment, that she should say something. She even opens her mouth. But then she remembers that this is Tommyinnit, whose idea of talking is harassing her about her love life, asking her to say swear words, and advertising himself to thin air. (Words are the second worst language, for their ambiguity. _I love you_ can mean _I hate you_ , and _I hate you_ can mean _I love you_ , and half the time she can hardly even figure out how to put what she wants to express into words without mucking it all up.)

False, wisely, decides not to say anything. She knows the language Tommy speaks - saw it herself, in the wilds of war. She saw the way he reveled in the battles, sought them out and started them because that was how he coped with the stress of being sixteen and a major political figure. She makes her choice.

She draws a spare netherite sword from her inventory (only partially enchanted, an unfinished replacement for her main sword, without even Mending runes carved into its hilt), and tosses it to him. Tommy fumbles it and, after it bounces off both hands, manages to nearly catch it before it falls off the side of Welsmart and into the ocean below his feet. She watches him, inscrutable, inspect the carved hilt and glowing gray blade, inspecting all of the imperfections - and then realize what he’s holding.

“Why,” he demands. Typical Tommy.

“It’s a shame you can’t bring nice things through the portals, with all the messing about of durability it does between worlds. Your gear on Dream SMP is quite nice, and while I doubt anything could hurt you _here,_ stuff can hurt you out _there,_ ” she explains.

“Out where,” he asks, more forcefully than his last question. She finds herself smiling, and spreads her arms wide. Maybe this can tell him what she’s getting at.

“ _Out there._ ”

* * *

False is impressed by Tommy’s ability to walk on the ice in Cub’s tunnels, but she doesn’t say so. She has to keep him on his toes, after all - also because he keeps complaining and accusing her of kidnapping him, and it’s obnoxious, and the best way to get him to stop is to ignore him, for the most part. She breaks her silence only to remind him that she didn’t _make_ him do anything, and that he followed her of his own volition. This makes him grumble and stop talking, finally, only to speak up and ask where they were going.

And of course, False brings him to xB’s place, to his arena. Tommy, after all, speaks the language of bodies - the language of violence - the same way she does, struggles with words in the same way she does. She’s seen it herself, been cut down by his blade in an arena in the sky, watched him race to victory past scores of desperate competitors, seen him survive longer than any team besides her own. The sullen teenager before her is not the one she sees monthly, with a sharp grin and a laugh like nails on a chalkboard and eyes that glint red in the glow of the sunset.

After a brief moment of confusion, during which they speak more than they have in the past hour (and which embarrasses False terribly), they decide to fight. It is, after all, what they’re made to do. She unbuckles her netherite armor and slips the straps of her elytra off her shoulders, while Tommy pulls iron platemail over his limbs awkwardly. The armor in Hermitcraft is decidedly not designed for his youthful, gangly, 190 centimeter frame; the breastplate hangs over his chest like a bell, and the trousers are slightly too short, leaving his ankles exposed. All of the armor is dented and worn, and where they can they fix it - but a decent repair job isn’t either of their specialties, so they just patch what they can and hope for the best.

They rest in the beds, and put on their helmets, and they get to work.

If False loves the calming repetition of the grind, it comes only second to the rhythm of a good fight. The way they block and catch each other’s openings matches the beat of her heart. Blood roars in her ears and all noise fades into the background until all she knows is that she is her sword, swinging toward Tommy, crashing into the metal of his torso; she is her shield, catching his blows. Her head is buzzing and she feels almost outside of herself, the way she did in the intimidation pits, digging up stone while Tommy babbled about the Queen. If she were a musician, she might have described it as a song.

False doesn’t notice the sun drifting lower and lower in the sky, until peach and orange and cherry shades bleed across the sky. Once more Tommy swings his sword and - it’s wedged in False’s shield. Their rhythm is interrupted and they both find themselves staring at it, and after a beat, they break out into laughter at the way it sticks out of the wood without even needing to be held.

With the spell broken, Tommy seems to take the opportunity to rest. He falls over onto the earth, chest heaving, and False figures she should sit, too. She offers him a flask of water and he gulps it down greedily. When he’s done, he simply breathes, splayed on his back; after a moment of silence, False speaks.

“Need to talk about anything?” she asks, nonchalantly. Tommy doesn’t seem to make an expression at all, and he doesn’t move.

“Wh-Why would I need to talk about something, Falsesymmetry?” Tommy asks, overly nonchalant. He says her name like it’s all one word. She clicks her tongue, but says nothing, and stands.

“Come on,” she instructs him, and holds out a hand to help him up. He takes it.

She pulls him up and for a moment they’re almost nose to nose. She’s been told her stare can be intimidating, so she focuses her gaze in between his eyes. Maybe if she scares him he’ll open up. The moment passes, and it doesn’t seem to work beyond making him break out in a cold sweat.

She brings him back into the tunnels. She picks a warped fungus and shows him how to feed the striders. He’s alarmed by their very wide mouths, and babbles for a while about how fucked up it is that they have such big mouths. She demonstrates how to get on top of one, and Tommy fumbles, but thankfully she had the foresight to bring his strider _out_ of lava first, to prevent any unnecessary deaths and lava burnage.

While she waits for him, she checks what she’s missed in chat. The timestamps indicate they’ve been gone for several hours at this point; the number of messages to read would certainly support that. (She sees something about the dog sanctuary and Ren, but skims over it. Nothing too unusual.) There’s a few unread messages from Cleo announcing to anyone not present at the Cowmercial District get-together that the party has moved to her zoo, and all are welcome to join. With that in mind, False turns back to Tommy, only to see his right arm shoulder-deep in his strider’s mouth and his left pinwheeling about wildly. She can’t help herself: she laughs.

“Wh - I - What the fuck!” Tommy sputters. His whole body leans into his flailing. “Don’t just stand there, do something and help me! This thing is evil, it’s eating me!”

“Striders are vegetarian, they only eat fungi,” False corrects him. “You probably have something it wants. Let go of the mushroom.”

“How did you know I was holding the fungus still?!” and then, “I thought I needed it for controlling them!”

“Tommy, I _have_ more, there’s no need to worry about not having enough.” She smiles, but acquiesces to cajoling the strider into letting him go anyway, with the offer of another treat. It takes it gratefully and waddles away. “You can hop on mine,” she offers, and Tommy grudgingly obliges.

* * *

Eventually, they emerge through a portal and into the Overworld once more - against the backdrop of a half-decimated forest is a massive archway, taller than the mountain beside it, made of sandstone and supported by massive stone elephants; more helpfully is a sign simply reading _ZOO_. They’ve arrived.

False heads down the path, past Cleo’s intricate armor stand creations and toward the open space at the heart of what will eventually be her zoo. A bonfire’s been set up, and a few Hermits sit around it; others hang out in smaller groups, casually talking. In the light of dusk, she can’t see any of the other visitors, and also notes that not every Hermit is present - notably, Etho and a few of the redstoners. She figures the bonfire is a good place to go - not too busy, and the people there have good vibes. By the time she arrives, the sun has set, casting the three figures around the fire into a red and gold glow.

“Hello everyone,” she greets, a smile breaking its way onto her face unbidden at the sight of her friends. Cleo, the host herself, leans up and grins in a kind of dopey-looking way.

“False!” Cleo cheers. “Hello, lovely!” She opens her arms wide, asking for a hug, and - oh, she’s holding a bottle of something. That looks like a bottle of Joe’s wine. She’s drunk. False smiles and obliges Cleo her hug. The other two campfire residents, xB and TFC, chime in their greetings. xB throws in a goofy little salute, two fingers still wrapped around a bottle of his own. False mirrors his motion.

“So, I found our missing visitor,” False starts, “and I’ve spent most of the day with him. He looked like he needed to… do something. Seemed lonely.”

“We had a missing visitor?” xB whispers. TFC elbows him gently with his good arm.

“Yeah, Tommy, Tommyinnit,” she clarifies. “One of the teenagers. He’s -” and she turns to look back to the portal and finds she doesn’t need to look so far away, because Tommy himself is hovering about 20 blocks away, just out of reach of the firelight and away from any Hermits. 

He followed her. He didn’t leave her alone. Something in her chest swells with happiness, and she feels herself smiling, and before she realizes it she’s waving him over quickly.

“This is xB, we borrowed his arena,” she starts, one hand between Tommy’s shoulder blades and the other gesturing toward the Hermit in question. xB gives Tommy the same salute and apologizes for not joining them before. “This is Cleo, she lives here and this is her zoo,” False continues. Cleo’s answering grin is sharp and sobering, but there’s still a look in her eyes that betrays the amount of wine she’s had that evening.

TFC introduces himself with a smile and a hand outstretched for a handshake, and xB, Cleo, and False all watch as Tommy leaves TFC hanging for several seconds too long and then stammers his way through introducing himself. There’s a cold sweat on the back of Tommy’s neck, like when False tried to intimidate him with her eyes. Tommy calls TFC “sir”. False restrains herself from laughing but won’t spare Tommy the indignity of knowing that if she _wanted_ to, she would be laughing her ass off at him. When the moment passes, she continues.

“Jevin and Hypno are over there, I think,” False waves toward a spot in the darkness - she can just barely make out the glint of Hypno’s gold earrings and the shiny sheen of Jevin’s slimy face reflecting the light of the bonfire. Scanning the area again, she looks to Cleo. “Did Wels and Bdubs leave early to sleep?”

“Take a wild guess,” Cleo snorts.

With Tommy, silent behind her like a shadow, she feels pinned. Suddenly, False wants Ren. Ren - who was with her in Dream SMP, even if he left her alone to join a war between friends they didn’t know, Ren who’s played by her side in every Minecraft Championship, who brought her to the top of the winner’s stage, who makes her feel comfortable and loved and safe and is _much_ better with people than she is. She looks around for him, looking for the suggestion of his sunglasses, a reflection from his watch, anything. No dice. It leaves her feeling off kilter. 

“Where’s Ren?” False asks, and Cleo laughs aloud and launches into a story about how Cub hired Joe to catch Ren, and that Ren is currently being chased around Joe’s dog sanctuary while Cub watches. Apparently, Cub has been sending updates in their chat - ah, that’s what those messages were about. She sits on the grass beside Cleo, slinging an arm around her friend’s waist in an attempt to ground herself, and Cleo, xB, and TFC break into laughter. It’s a funny story, but False feels unsettled. She does not hear the familiar sound of nails on a chalkboard.

False looks to Tommy and sees him standing, looking small again. His back is hunched and his chin is to his chest, his eyes trained on the ground and a hand on his arm. He looks lost again - the way he did on Welsmart’s roof. False gives him a moment, and as the conversation continues, she reaches for him.

“Tommy, come sit here,” she offers, and he doesn’t listen. “Tommy?” she repeats, and instead of him listening, she watches him storm off into the remains of the natural forest that had been here, towards Cleo and Joe’s site of the future zoo exhibits of Hermit clones. False is left with a hand outstretched and feeling like she’s missed an arrow shot in Dodgebolt - painfully open. There are three pairs of eyes on her, and she feels more pinned than ever.

“Go after him,” TFC suggests. “I think I’d need that if I were his age.”

False nods, and doesn’t need to think twice about standing up and walking briskly after him.

As they journey farther away from settled land, it gets darker and darker. There are mobs, but False makes quick work of them - while Tommy simply walks past and seems to ignore them. A creeper explodes and False curses. As much as she’d like to, she can’t stop to fill in the hole - she needs to keep following. She pulls out a torch and that helps, somewhat, with seeing the space around her, but it feels harder to see Tommy’s silhouette in the dark. All of a sudden, he stops, and then they’re standing in the forest, alone.

“Why the fuck are you following me,” Tommy snaps. “Why did you kidnap me, why did you spend time with me.”

“Because I wanted to,” False tells him, honestly. “I liked spending time with you.”

“Why do you care?” he hisses. “Why do you care when - when I made you my hostage, when I said all sorts of lies about you as a joke -”

“You did do that,” False admits plainly. Something in Tommy snaps and he breaks out into slightly hysterical laughter.

“Why do you care when my own fucking family doesn’t?” he cries, voice thick. “When they leave me behind for people who are cooler than me, people who can build - I don’t know, fuckin’, redstone or whatever, and make little kids with balloons and trash cans and shit out of armor stands, and who have so much money that they have a spare set of fuckin’ netherite gear? Do they not like me anymore? What did I do wrong?” He sniffles, and False abruptly realizes he’s crying. In a panic, she pats his shoulder, and his eyes - red with tears - look up at her.

She takes a breath. She doesn’t know where to begin. “When I was trapped in your home, I was alone, too,” she explains. “I didn’t know anybody, and everybody I knew left me. Ren joined your faction, Pogtopia, and Grian involved himself in politics. Even H and Fruit left me alone, because they were busy being best friends and doing best friend stuff.” Tommy’s looking at her in a slightly different way now - it feels sharper. It hurts. “I was really… sad and alone. I’m not super good at _people_ , if you can’t tell,” she huffs once, a laugh. “But it turned out that I didn’t need to be, because this loud teenager decided to make me into his unpaid laborer. And I think that that was exactly what I needed at that time.”

Tommy sniffles. “So you’re saying you endorse slavery?” he asks, and grins while wiping his eyes. “Fuck, I’m crying! I’m a big man, I don’t cry, my tear ducts were surgically removed when I was three! How is this relevant, Falsesymmetry?”

“You can be a big man and cry,” she tells him. “And no, Tommy, you know what I meant. I think.” She stops and considers. “I meant that I needed a friend.”

She reaches out and clasps his shoulder tightly. His body sways a little under her grip. “Tommy, you gave me space to feel, and I wasn’t alone. It was great. And I noticed you looked… upset, back at Welsmart. So I thought maybe, you’d want that, too.”

He blows his nose on the bottom of his shirt. Ew. Disgusting. “You’d do that for me?”

“Yeah, I like you,” she answers, simply, with a shrug. “What’s bothering you?”

Tommy goes quiet, turns his head down again, and kicks at the dirt under their feet. “It’s just - Wil, and Phil, and Techno, and even fucking Tubbo - they’re just, they abandoned me, they have better friends and I’m just - left alone. And I get it because I’m, you know, me - so overwhelmingly cool that I intimidate everyone I meet -” he laughs halfheartedly, “- but it just. Sucks. I don’t know.”

Something clicks for False. She ruffles his hair, and he protests loudly and unintelligibly in the process.

“You can’t have people’s attention all the time, Tommy,” she gets right to the point. “I know it hurts, being alone, but you have to work through it. You need to reach out to people. The only way to not be alone is to not be alone.”

“But what if I want Wil and someone else has him?” Tommy asks petulantly.

“Then you wait for him,” False answers honestly. “Because he loves you, he will come back.”

“What if he replaces me? What if he never comes back?” In all the time False has known him, Tommy has never looked as young as he does in this moment: small and vulnerable, like a child watching phantoms circle in the night sky.

“How many sixteen year olds eligible to be Wilbur Soot’s replacement little brother do you think there are on this server?” she deadpans, and Tommy snorts.

“Point taken,” he tells her. He wipes at his eyes again. “Thank you. Seriously.”

False suddenly feels a little self conscious. She shrugs and turns to the side. “It’s just being a good friend,” she mumbles.

“Are we friends?” Tommy asks, suddenly shifting to face her dead on. She startles.

“Yeah? I’ve thought we were friends for a while,” she admits, and Tommy laughs - not his nails-on-a-chalkboard laugh, something similar but quieter, more suited to the still night around them. He moves forward and throws his arms around her shoulders, and she freezes; but while he’s still holding on she tentatively raises her arms and pats his back.

“Thanks, Falsesymmetry,” Tommy whispers, still holding onto her. “Can I ask you a question?”

False thinks for a moment. “Shoot.”

“Are you in love with ZombieCleo?”

And the moment has been ruined. False lets go of Tommy and without saying a word, turns and walks away. She hears ear-grating, yet somehow comforting, screaming peals of laughter echoing in the dark forest behind her, and despite everything, she can’t bring herself to hate him.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! remember to visit us on tumblr if you're interested in reading more about this au :)


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